


Hell of a Skyline

by Arowen12



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Juno dies a lot, Juno is Hyperion city au, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, Mostly Canon Compliant, Other, Personification, Pets Juno gently this boy can fit so much trauma in him, Sort of a Hetalia Au i guess, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27732931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arowen12/pseuds/Arowen12
Summary: It’s the small things, it always is. It starts with the streets, Juno’s always known the streets of Hyperion well, he’s probably spent half his life on these streets and he’s spilt enough blood on them. It’s the streets shifting when he’s in pursuit, a dead-end suddenly splitting open onto the culprit.Sometimes, late at night, he breathes with the city, he hears the distant sound of cars honking, a woman crooning to her child, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of her feet. There’s a man at the other end of the city, he can’t catch his breath and Juno reaches counts breaths like Ben used to do with him.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	Hell of a Skyline

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone, I am here with my first Penumbra fic (and probably not my last). I totally blame my friend for the existence of this fic as he got me into the podcast. This is also inspired by Paris Burning by thecitysmith, it's probably one of my favourite Les Mis fics and I would def recommend. Anyways, read on and enjoy!

Juno isn’t sure when it happens, maybe when he’s a kid, when it’s the two of them against the world, against all the shit the world throws at them and keeps throwing at them. They almost died often enough, it wouldn’t be surprising if, after too many drinks, he just got up, or a hit laced with something awful he woke up in an alleyway.

Sometimes he wonders if Ben was like him if he could feel it humming beneath his skin, in his head like a song, like a lullaby he once knew.

Juno wonders if it was passed to him, like a relay in some kind of race, like in that one episode he watched as a kid, hazy and half-remembered. Or maybe he did something, stood up, said something. Maybe it was chance, just life taking another chance to kick Juno Steel when he was already down.

It starts small, so small it’s barely noticeable with all the other shit he has going on. But it starts and Juno’s always tried to be observant. After Benzaiten’s death, well let’s just say he didn’t observe much beyond the passing of days suddenly without Ben in the world, every day another where he was older than Ben, another day that Ben didn’t have because of him.

So, it took a while.

It’s the small things, it always is. It starts with the streets, Juno’s always known the streets of Hyperion well, he’s probably spent half his life on these streets and he’s spilt enough blood on them. It’s the streets shifting when he’s in pursuit, a dead-end suddenly splitting open onto the culprit, a jewel thief who left cheap plastic replicas in its place. It’s the ground tripping someone he’s running after, it’s an instinctive knowledge that the building to the right has three people in it.

Sometimes, late at night, he breathes with the city, he hears the distant sound of cars honking, a woman crooning to her child, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of her feet. There’s a man at the other end of the city, he can’t catch his breath and Juno _reaches_ counts breaths like Ben used to do with him.

He feels the city; it hums beneath his feet, a living breathing thing. There’s a power outage in one of the newer districts and it tingles up and down his fingers like pins and needles. Oldtown is closed off in the wake of another dust storm and his eyes are watering and sore, and all he can taste on his tongue is sand.

The first time he dies, and remembers goes something like this.

He’s being shot at as he’s running across a warehouse in Oldtown, a case for some rich dude who had ‘misplaced’ his daughter. Turns out she had gotten involved with a drug ring, which was running circles around the local police force; typical. So, Juno’s ducking across a warehouse, the blasters aren’t on stun but that’s fine. He ducks behind a crate takes a moment to catch his breath praying its not an asthma attack and he gets stabbed.

It’s anticlimactic, to be honest.

But he didn’t expect to live past thirty anyway.

So yeah, he gets stabbed, bleeds out, has a few last minutes regrets that he couldn’t have uh done more? Maybe gone off-planet. Or done something with his life? That’s what people usually think when they’re dying right?

Then he dies.

It’s not anything particularly special, there’s no bright white lights, no choir of whatever deity you might believe in, there’s not any welcoming darkness or uh whatever Hell might be. Just nothing.

Then he wakes up.

He tastes dust on his tongue and can feel water soaking through his trench coat, distantly, like he’s waking from a dream. Something shuffles and a rabbit peers overhead, Juno groans pathetically.

He makes his way out of the sewers, somehow, he knows where he is and he knows the walk to his apartment shouldn’t have been that long. Rita calls him as soon as he steps through the door, she has a sixth sense for this kind of thing and he reassures her, one hand hovering over the knife wound. There’s nothing not even a scar, a sliver of a reminder.

The next day he tells the man, gets his cash and resolutely doesn’t think about it again.

Except he does.

He thinks about it at three am when he wakes up clawing at his chest for a blade that isn’t there, he counts his breaths to the off-key singing of a women stumbling towards her home sixteen blocks from where he is. He falls asleep to the sound of an old man talking with his grandson, their voices young and old.

Maybe it was just a one-off, a freak accident. These things are known to happen in Hyperion City after all.

And then it happens again.

This time, it’s not as neat or as clean as a knife. It’s a plasma bolt through the chest, and not a small blaster, some new weaponry no doubt meant to bring greater pain and suffering to the galaxy. It carves a hole bigger than his head through his chest.

He wakes up slumped over in an alleyway.

This time, it’s like waking from a hangover, from a night drinking with Mick to forget their sorrows, their history, their shared everything. He glances up to see the dusty metal caving in above him, the alleyway almost curled around him and he thinks _fuck_.

But Juno is good at denial, there’s a certain tact to it of course when one’s a private eye. He pretends it never happened, he goes home cries himself to sleep along with a kid in an orphanage who knows he’ll never find a family and a father with a babe and the mother just walked out.

The third time it happens he’s blown to bits. Literally. Could not be more literal if he tried.

He should really stop taking cases for the Kanagawas.

Juno wakes up with his arm still reforming and the toes of his left foot in his apartment with Rita hovering over him. She reminds him of those birds, the ones that flit around really fast and make an incessant humming noise. Her eyes go really wide and she exclaims, “Boss! I thought you were dead and then you weren’t and oh my god this is like on one of my streams where this man was cursed and he couldn’t die, or oh! Like in this other stream I saw where there was this woman but she was actually a goddess and you ain’t a goddess, are you mistah Steel cause if you are it’s-,”

“Rita,” He says her name with what little strength he has and for a moment he feels her, her anxiety, the worry about him, the curiosity, the way her mind flits from thought to thought. She’s staring at him with her eyes practically welling up and all he says is, “I’m fine.

She glances down at his still regenerating foot and then his arm, and oh there are bloodstains on the couch, great. Rita reaches out slowly, the motion carefully telegraphed and pats him once on the thigh, “It’s okay boss I won’t say anything.”

And he really loves her at that moment even if he’ll never find the time or the way to say it.

So, now that the denial phase is over and let’s face it, Juno runs on anger, it’s time for good old acceptance. Except, Juno’s never really reached that phase, hasn’t really put the effort in.

What he does do, is research.

Rita at least is helpful there, she sends him stream after stream, most of which he doesn’t watch and what he does he won’t admit to watching on pain of death. But she also sends documents, old terra records.

Countries, cities, they use to be really big on earth, still are in some ways, but colonized planets never really got the same flare for a whole national identity. One big happy family, you know? But apparently, sometimes, through undetermined reasons, he hates when things are ‘undetermined’ there were people like him. Or there were rumours of people like him.

Great.

There’s practically nothing, no mention of the city shifting beneath his feet, the way he can feel the people of the city, the black outs and fires and explosions that rock through his body, the way change prickles at the back of his neck.

Just a passing mention of a possibility.

What is he even supposed to do with the information? Go off and try to terraform the city, run for mayor? Is this some kind of gift or curse?

Juno as in the case of all great detectives’ puzzles over it for exactly five and a half days before another case pops up and he puts it on the backburner. There’s not much he can do about it, or do with it, so he doesn’t necessarily forget, it just becomes another part of life, Ben is dead and he is part of Hyperion City.

He takes some of the more dangerous cases, the ones newbies and old men wanting to die take. He dies, he wakes up, sometimes Rita finds him, sometimes she doesn’t, he has nightmares about it, he keeps working.

And then, then Croesus croaks and he wakes up to a threat on his life.

It’s not anything out of the ordinary, he’s been threatened numerous times. But then Sasha just has to call and make it Dark Matters business.

So, what if the mask is cursed? He dies, he lives, he goes back to solving cases and hoping somehow, someway he’s making a difference. But no, she just had to send another agent.

Rex Glass is cool, composed, and the opposite of most glass in that he’s opaque and hard to see through. He smiles at Juno from beneath his glasses and he’s tempted to continue his climb out the window, the street will cushion most of his fall if he chooses to jump. He doesn’t and that’s probably his second mistake of the day; the first was waking up.

Their hands touch and it’s like the moment before lightning strikes, his hands are smooth, soft, and when he locks eyes with Juno he smiles, all sharp teeth.

It’s another case, another mystery except it’s the Kanagawas and he won’t lie and say they don’t give him the creeps. It’s a tangible feeling, like a nail that keeps catching on your clothes as they make their way through the mansion and into the gallery.

It's uh not pleasant, he can’t say he’s seen worse or even been worse.

So, they play detective and Juno tries to get a read on Glass as he interviews Cassandra, and the leads them towards Cecil’s lab. But he’s not a citizen of Hyperion and he’s just slippery, hard to get a grip on like well, glass.

They solve the case, everyone gets a happy ending, the end. That would be nice right?

Instead, Cassandra gets carted away to be the face of yet another Kanagawa production, and Min gets exactly what she wanted. It sits in his stomach like a piece of lead, he died once being impaled on a piece of pipe, it wasn’t pleasant.

They wait in the chill of the night, the streets hum beneath his feet, he can hear someone crooning to their partner as they dance, in another place, a couple walks down the street, their laughter fills his head.

When Rex suggests going back to Juno’s place he says yes. He has a moment for shame at the state of the place, the mess, the blood stains from his last death and regeneration on the armchair.

Then Rex’s lips are on his and they’re soft and he tastes a fountain, clean city streets, the burn of lasers, flowers, warm bread, blood, hunger (he wonders what Hyperion tastes of, dust, electricity, the sewers, the opulence of the rich, metal, and blood). He feels a hand dip into his pocket as he clicks the handcuffs around Rex’s hands.

They separate, Rex’s glasses knocked askew and for a moment Juno glances into his eyes and sees a city, sees people and streets, little restaurants and decorative architecture.

“My, Juno you _are_ full of surprises,” Rex Glass says his eyes are twinkling, glowing like the lights of his city, whatever it is.

Juno huffs and shoves his hands his pockets, “What’s your name, your real name?”

“My and give up the game so soon?” Rex responds, he is studying Juno now, swallowing him whole.

“The police will be here in ten minutes, just tell me,” Juno responds and he itches to do something. He wishes this isn’t how is a first meeting with someone like him had to end, but no of course not, this is Juno Steel’s life everyone.

Glass’ smile crinkles, revealing his sharp teeth, “Now Juno, surely you know better than that.”

“I’m not the best at learning my lessons,” Juno replies and he’s tired, so tired suddenly. He wonders how long this will last, will it just stop one day without his notice and he won’t know until the next serious wound gets him. Or will he grow old and then die naturally? Or will he live as long as Hyperion lives or until it changes until it’s unrecognisable?

“You could come with me,” Rex’s voice is soft, imploring and Juno wants it, he wants it so badly.

“I can’t,” he doesn’t even know if he can. Is he grounded here forever? Does he even want to leave? This is his home, the place where the few people he has are, Rita, Mick, these are his streets, his people.

Rex’s face falls but at the same time, it is understanding and maybe even pitying. The police arrive, jeering at Juno and there’s no time to say anything else, they lock eyes and Juno can taste fountains on his tongue. Then he’s gone.

And so consequently it ends up is the mask.

He leaves behind a name, Peter Nureyev and beneath that New Kinshasa.

So, well, he mopes, he’s not going to deny it, but hey he only mopes a bit. Rita catches him staring at the note roughly five times before he shoves it into his safe for bad nights and tries to forget that Peter Nureyev ever existed.

Except, well here’s the thing.

That’s kind of impossible when Nureyev was the only other city Juno’s met. Suddenly, he’s wondering as he’s listening to the Prince of Mars talk and talk if the other Martian cities have people like him. Is there a whole society? Does a group chat exist?

(On one night, where he jumps at shadows and all he can hear is the city screaming. He pulls up his comms, fumbles with them until his eyes hurt, but then he finds it, Brahma, New Kinshasa. He knows practically nothing about Peter Nureyev, can barely tell what was the persona and what was lying underneath. But there late at night, he reads about his city.)

He puts Peter Nureyev behind him focuses on his next case as much as he wishes he could wallow forever, who knows he probably could. He sees Peter Nureyev, or he thinks he does, and he has so many questions, he can still smell his cologne.

And then, then it ends with him swallowing the Martian pill.

He senses everything. Every single person in his city, their thoughts are a cacophony, louder than that even, this must have been what the start of their universe was like because he is collapsing in on himself. It’s as if there is no Juno Steel, he is simply the city and the city is not simple.

Then nothing.

Maybe he dies, maybe he loses conscious, maybe he’s in a coma and won’t wake again. Who knows? Not Juno.

But he does wake.

His head throbs and every part of him feels as if he’s been electrocuted and then fried for extra flavour. The lights of the hospital room are a blinding white and Juno can feel Hyperion with each breath he takes.

It takes a while for him to reach a state of normal again. It isn’t normal if he’s being honest with himself, Rita helps (sometimes he just focuses on her and it’s enough) but he’s losing sleep, he can’t tune it out anymore, it all compresses together, a wall of sound blocking him in, tuning out the rest of the world.

But Juno has always been good at working through the pain and there’s too much at stake for him to stop, to take a break. So, he follows the trail of missing Martian artefacts to Vicky Valles, he ignores the way the city twists around him through him, and in the end, it leads him back to Peter Nureyev.

Juno’s knees go weak and for a moment he’s tempted to do something, he’s not sure what, beg, cry, plead, because he can hear a thousand people crying, can feel bones breaking, can hear laughter and it’s swirling inside him, he’s a drain that won’t clog. And for some reason he thinks, maybe knows Peter can help him.

“Hello Juno,” Peter says and the spell is broken, he swallows pushes it down and focuses.

Being near Peter again is heady, he wants to reach out, touch him, escape his own city. They achieve that last step, driving away from Hyperion feels like there’s a band being wrapped around his chest, squeezing tighter, tighter, and threatening to snap. It feels like the build up to an asthma attack and Peter watches him with barely concealed concern.

But it’s quieter. Enough for Juno to actually think again, to feel his own breath, his own body.

It doesn’t really last as they’re swept up into trying to catch the train. A part of Juno feels like himself again, before the pill, the thrill of a mystery. Sure, he has to use the Martian pill to find a solution, but the point remains, it feels right.

They sleep on the same hotel bed and Juno hears faint laughter, the sound of water rushing from fountains, the humid scent of soil and nature. Peter wraps his arms tighter around Juno and doesn’t mention the tears.

And then Miasma finds them and the day goes from mediocre to absolutely terrible, horrible, and no good.

Miasma is well weird, she bumps up against his senses, makes the hair prickle on the back of his neck. It’s a creeping, sinking sort of feeling that saturates his body (he can’t feel his city, he can’t feel Hyperion, he can’t find Rita) as he watches her goons torture Peter. Juno pushes and pulls and it’s like when they were kids and there were leeches in the sewers, Ben helped him pull them off until Sasha yelled at them and warmed up a spoon and got some salt.

Peter’s mind is like – it’s like, how do you describe another person? The vast breadth of their thoughts and feelings, the layers of them like those ancient seas that just go deeper and deeper. It’s like the best memory and the worst emotions, it’s the softest fabric and the harshest sound. And it’s Peter Nureyev.

He heals fast, they both do.

They curl together in the room they’ve been shoved in, keeping their breaths in time. Juno drowns himself in New Kinshasa’s fountains, in the smell of their bakeries (Peter talks for an hour when Juno asks, about the way they sprinkle icing sugar on rolls of steaming dough filled with sweat jams, and curls of cinnamon with a glaze on top), the heady laugh of the rich, the hunger of the poor.

He wonders if Peter finds any comfort in Hyperion, in it’s shining lights, it’s joy, it’s laughter, the tiny Thai places tucked into the walls, the cocktails which bubble and froth and change colours, the way the dome hums a constant low-thrum lullaby.

Juno wakes from a nightmare, a multitude of his deaths crammed together over and over again, and Peter tightens his arms around Juno and offers his mind, offers himself up. Juno is a drowning man and Peter Nureyev isn’t air, not really, but he’s the sunlight Juno wants to reach for.

In the aftermath, they gasp both breathless and Peter chuckles and says, “Funny isn’t it? A city of thieves personified by a thief,” his expression turns slightly, “A city which steals lives.”

Juno wipes at the blood on his face, leans closer with a shudder and asks, “Have you gone back, since…?”

Peter nods reaching up to wipe away the blood on Juno’s cheeks, his lips crook into a smile and even in the darkness, even in pain his eyes are bright (he wonders if that brightness is Brahma’s guardian angel system if his teeth are the sharpness of New Kinshasa’s streets, how does Hyperion wear Juno?) He nods, “I can’t stay away forever, once a year, sometimes two years,” he glances away, “I would stay away forever if I could, I think. I never chose this.”

“Have you – did you ever try to change it?” Juno asks fingers hovering over Peter’s pulse and keeping time with his breaths.

Peter shakes his head glancing away at the Martian glyphs which seem to pulse in time with their heartbeats, “I stopped trying when Peter Nureyev died.”

It’s a contradiction that Juno doesn’t point out, he has some tact, he tightens his arms around Nureyev and breathes in the laughter of a distant city. Peter turns his face into Juno’s neck his breathing shaky beneath the humming.

Later, time melting into itself Peter glances up at him, he’s pale, worn and he sounds half-delirious when he says, “You’re like a nightlight you know?”

“No,” Juno replies with laughter in his voice, the corners of Peter’s lips quirk slightly.

“You glow, faintly,” Peter adds and Juno’s thinking they probably hit Peter over the head one to many times when Peter catches sight of his expression and shakes his head leaning forward to silence him with a kiss.

Peter escapes, Miasma returns, Juno almost dies and Miasma doesn’t die. Then they’re running down the corridors like a maze trying to save Mars and Juno feels alive as they slide into the room with the other Martian artefacts.

And, surprise Miasma is still alive. But she’s not the only one who can regenerate.

Juno digs, searching for an answer, a way to stop everything, to save Nureyev. Then the pain explodes through his skull and he’s jolted back to reality, his vision greying out and this is like the time he was deafened by an explosion. But he knows enough even if half his vision is missing and he can’t reach anymore. The door slides closed with Peter on the other side and he’s pounding on the door because they’re cities and maybe vaporization might just be enough to stop them coming back, but Juno can’t let Miasma win, can’t let Peter die.

The bomb goes off.

It rips through Miasma, tears through his cells, through his reforming eye and it’s a tangible feeling, like being out in the desert too long, like ice on a burn. Then it’s over, and Juno’s alive.

Peter cradles him close to his chest as Juno stares up at him through the blood and they’re laughing, he thinks they’re probably crying too.

Stepping back into Hyperion is like coming home again, not their place in Old Town, maybe not even Halcyon, or his apartment. It’s that feeling when he and Benzaiten would be somewhere no one else could find them and it was just the two of them against the world.

Juno can still sense his city, can feel it like sand beneath his toes and in unpleasant places and he thought he would never miss the sensation but he realises suddenly how much he does. Because this is him, this is his city.

They collapse in a seedy hotel and Juno listens to Peter mumble about distant planets, distant stars, sights he could never dream of. They wash the dust from each other, trace scars from before, and Juno stares at a dingy mirror with one eye a few shades darker than it was before. It feels right that there’s some marker, some evidence of what they’ve gone through.

They fall asleep coiled against each other, Juno can feel New Kinshasa’s high-rises against his thigh, the underbelly against his toes, the heart of the city against his chest. He wakes and stares at Peter Nureyev for a long time, he wants to stay and maybe that’s the problem, he’s not ready to go, and Peter is. Juno can’t hold him here, can’t make him wait till Juno’s ready.

He has a duty to his city; he needs to be here. Peter deserves better than a fuck up like Juno. He presses a kiss to Peter’s forehead; wishes he could convey everything he needs to say. He leaves behind a slip of paper with his name and then he leaves.

Does he regret it?

Oh, one hundred per cent, but he’s also terrified of what Nureyev could do to him, what Juno would allow him to do to him. Maybe Nureyev’s not like that, maybe Juno has trust issues (he does) but Juno can’t.

He’s not sure what to do after everything, how does one come back from being tortured by a mad scientist for weeks and then just go back to normal? He shows up at the office the next day and Rita’s there, her eyes water and she flings her arms around him and Juno just sinks into her for a moment, inhales the faint scent of her perfume, the saltiness of her snacks on her breath.

His eyes start watering without his consent and Juno isn’t sure how they get from the office to his couch with him sobbing on her shoulder in between pints of ice cream but that’s what happens.

Juno moves on eventually, well he doesn’t move on from Peter Nureyev he’s not really sure how to, is there a guide book somewhere? He sees his shadow in the distance, hears his laughter in other people’s mouths, and every once in a while, gets a whiff of that damn cologne.

He takes a few cases but his heart’s not really in it, he misses shots, dies more than he probably should, and goes back to the office stuck in the same dreary cycle. Sometimes he has to wonder what his purpose is, what is he even supposed to be doing? Why is he still alive?

He thinks he knew the answers to those questions once, back when he worked for the police department maybe, the scum of the earth that it was, at least he thought he was helping people then. He thought he was helping people as a private eye too. But it’s just a never-ending cycle, isn’t it? He helps one person and three more are killed, wounded, robbed, and he can fucking feel it.

Rita tries, she’s never let one of Juno’s slumps stop her, she drags him to the office, finds him nice cases, the sort of feel-good find someone’s grandma’s wedding ring cases, they sit and watch streams late into the night and get breakfast together.

He sits across from her over greasy cloned eggs and bacon and he wants to say thank you but the words are locked up inside his throat, cause if he says thanks, she’ll leave him or she’ll throw it back in his face. She wouldn’t. Juno knows that but there’s a voice in his head that keeps insisting otherwise and he’s always been a coward beneath the bravado, so he stays quiet.

And then well, then the case with the cat comes flying into his office, or rather the cat’s owner does. Juno gets lost in the case, it’s a stupid light-hearted case and after the previous one well (he was beheaded it was pretty nasty).

It turns out to be more than a simple missing cat case though. It ends with Juno missing the shot (he’s been missing a lot of those lately and what is he without his sharpshooting?) and the Piranha getting away, and an offer to meet with Ramses O'Flaherty.

Juno debates over it for a while, he tries not to get involved with politicians on a political level. Well he tries, he’s gotten on the wrong side of more than a few of them over the years, last he checked he’s still banned from city hall.

But he does go.

The park is nice, he inhales and feels the ground beneath his feet, the laughter of a child running to her parents, the birds chirping. Ramses O'Flaherty is sitting on a bench in the glow of the sun, he is old and he is _familiar._ Not in the way that if he pushes, he can know any citizen’s name and sometimes a bit more, but something more Juno and less Hyperion.

He settles tentatively on the bench ready to flee at a moment’s notice and then Ramses starts to speak and Juno feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It’s like there’s a breeze blowing and only he can feel it and he stares at Ramses, listens to his plans for change and a part of him wants so desperately, more than he’s wanted anything (except one thing) in his life.

But he still asks, “And what’s in it for me?”

He doesn’t go around offering up the information that he’s Hyperion. A part of him wants to do it, do this for free though, he believes in Ramses, believes that he’ll make a change and Hyperion needs a change, he wants that for himself, for his city.

Ramses smiles and the expression tickles at the back of his throat, it’s familiar and Juno’s not sure from where and that’s going to bother him until he solves it. Ramses laughs, “Well for one quite the sizable paycheck, but well what do you want Juno?”

What does he want? His brother back, to stop making stupid mistakes, Peter Nureyev, for it all to just stop. But well that isn’t really feasible now, is it? He shrugs, “To actually see some improvement in this goddamn city.”

That makes Ramses smile, “I knew we were of the same mind Juno. Well, if you think of anything else let me know, I have had quite the interest in a little side project of mine, a prosthetic enhancer of sorts.”

Juno shakes his head, “I’m good.”

Not to mention that it probably wouldn’t stick too well, tattoos only last so long before he has to get them touched up and piercings are a bitch if he leaves them out for too long. Ramses just nods and well that’s that.

He gives him a blaster, the balance is perfect, a newer model. Juno uses it and it feels like an extension of change and there’s something wrong with that feeling but it’s there nonetheless.

So, Juno gets yanked from case to case and he’s not going to lie and say he doesn’t feel like a guard dog like he’s on a leash. But he solves cases, saves Ramses’ life and all the while at the back of his mind he paces like a lion in a cage over the information he has because here’s the thing, something doesn’t sit right with him about the whole thing.

Sure, Ramses probably has good intentions, but Juno’s found over the years that good intentions from the rich are fuelled by guilt or something horrible in their past. Not all of them, but well a man like Ramses, he’s change and he’s like sunlight but he also sits wrong against Juno’s skin.

It comes to a head with Piranha and Pilot in the sewers and Juno there alone, he was tempted to call Alessandra Strong, the cockroach they called her, and hey maybe he needed someone who doesn’t die to cancel out how often he does. But then, he doesn’t want to drag anyone down with him.

He ends up captured due to his faulty fucking aim and thinks maybe he should have called her. But then, then it’s all about the Free Dome and Juno can’t help but wonder if it's true, maybe a part of him, the one that believed in Andromeda and Turbo wants to believe in this myth and legend, that something like that can be true.

Another part of him wonders if there’s a representation of the Free Dome, he hasn’t heard anything about Olympus Mons but why not here?

He may not have brought Alessandra with him but he tries to think like her, he packs extra and only contemplates shooting himself once (for a plan to be clear). And then they arrive and Juno’s mind is still trying to put the pieces together, creatures which have been extinct for thousands of years (one of Rita’s more documentary streams), and the Piranha, all on election day.

Pilot commands and the Piranha manhandles him into the chair and Juno takes that moment of contact and _reaches_ , pulls out a name, a faint memory of childhood and Ramses O’Flaherty’s voice before the machine is going full vampire on him and sucking his blood.

So, Juno’s ready to die again, ready to have his blood drained out of him, oh well.

It starts to drain and then you know what? He doesn’t want to die after all.

In fact, he’s fucking sick of dying. More than that, more than not wanting to die because it sucks, he wants to live.

Huh, that’s a new one, right?

But it’s not like he can just stop the machine.

That doesn’t stop him from trying, he’s not sure if will power really is a thing in this case but he doesn’t want to die. It seems to work because the machine and then all his blood is back where it belongs and yeah, he would not recommend that to anyone.

There is no Free Dome.

Just the wide expanse of the open desert and the so very distant tug of Hyperion, the winds of change tangling around his limbs and filling his lungs and he’s not there. And then it all comes spilling out, doesn’t it?

Of course, Piranha was working for Ramses, it was all a plot to get Pilot out of the way and now he’s lying there on the sand his blood staining the already rusty stand dark red. There’s a sandstorm brewing on the horizon and Juno wonders distantly as he points his blaster at the Piranha if he’d come back from that.

He leaves the Piranha, Julia Lion, forty-five years of age, no living relatives, has a fish at home that wasn’t doing well in the first place, cooling on the desert sands. Then, he begins to walk.

He feels betrayed. He should be used to it by now right?

It was all a set-up, just another person taking advantage of stupid, idiot Juno Steel. And the worst part? The worst part is that Juno still wants that change, still believes in Ramses.

All for the greater good, that’s what types like him say. They justify poverty, murder, and so much as long as it turns out for the greater good. But what if it does? If Ramses accomplishes all he wants to for Hyperion does it balance out? Is there some universal scale weighing everything?

It doesn’t matter.

He’ll survive this, he always has before. And hey! He has a will to live now, that’s great.

But for now, he’s just tired and he stops, stares at the sands around him, already the bodies of his past are being buried beneath the sands of time and he just stops. Lays on the sand and stares up at the Martian sky, apparently, sunsets on earth are like a rainbow, blues, yellows, reds, oranges, purples, but on Mars, without the dome, it’s a blue sort of twilight.

Juno closes his eyes and wishes for a moment his mind would be quiet, bold of him to assume. He lays there in the sand as his mind runs circles around Ramses, who appeared out of nowhere thirty years ago, Rita couldn’t dig up much on him, and Juno knows he’s never met Ramses O’Flaherty before but there’s something so goddamn familiar about him.

And then he catches the faintest trail of a memory, the words, “Turbo is here!”

He thinks of that day, coming home, Sarah in the doorway her smug smile, her ranting and raving, and Ben, so cold on the floor. Juno feels bile rise at the back of his throat, he’s suddenly chilled, he doesn’t want to think about this.

He’s been avoiding this for twenty odd years, what’s a few more?

Juno focuses on something else; he can feel Hyperion’s tentative joy, it tingles through his fingers and toes, they’re celebrating and he’s lying here in the sands having a breakdown. He should… should what? Walk back to Hyperion? Confront Ramses and say what? Do what?

_It’s a fact you can count on Jack_.

Juno jolts upright, sand spilling from him as he gasps for breath because no, no, no. It can’t be. That day – the one that ruined everything and oh how could he forget? How could he be so fucking stupid? What was it the engineer had said, stolen the other writer’s presentation?

The same watch, the same fucking watch and that smile. The facial features were different, his voice a bit different too, but how has Juno forgotten? The man who ruined their lives, who took Andromeda from their mom.

He has always thought she was a monster, and maybe she was, maybe he was, but she had still been human, had still had dreams and aspirations and he had forgotten that, after Ben, not a lot of the good stuff lingered.

And Ben, who stayed and Juno still didn't have a clue why or maybe he did and just didn't want to say it. 

“Juno Steel,” A voice intones and Juno startles, he’s half-covered with sand and he wonders how long he’s been sitting here trapped inside his own head. He glances up and it’s the guy in the jacket, not a citizen.

“Hey,” Juno replies waving a hand and casually brushing the sand off his skirt.

The big guy raises a brow and comments bluntly, “You are surprisingly not afflicted by radiation poisoning.”

“Perks of being Old Town scum,” Juno lies.

The man hums and says, “Come with me.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You could walk back to Hyperion City and likely die along the way,” The big guy responds.

Juno thinks over it for a minute before he rises to his feet and says, “And I’m supposing you want something out of me?”

He nods, “If you are willing there is a task which could use your help. I will tell you more once we arrive at our destination.”

It’s already been one hell of a day. Juno accepts.

He tosses Ramses – Jack’s blaster in the dust behind him.

So, he meets Buddy, gets stabbed by Vespa, heals remarkably quickly and tries not to make a big deal out of it but uh Buddy definitely notices something, they reunite Buddy and Vespa and all the while Juno’s eyes ache and his vision goes blurry and his head his pounding and it’s not the radiation sickness and mostly not the tears.

The drive back to Hyperion is quiet and when they finally arrive it’s like coming home again (Jet will look at Juno, watch the way his shoulders untense, and he’ll mark it up to a trick of his eyes but he’ll swear he sees Juno glow a bit). The big guy gives him a comm with Buddy’s number, mentions the possibility of another mission and then he’s gone and Juno’s alone.

He tries to call Rita but gets her voice mail and he doesn’t have time for this. Not when now that he’s here, he can feel it, something’s happening to Old Town. He fiddles with the comms and tunes into the radio station as he cuts through streets that didn’t exist beforehand and to one of the sewer entrances.

That’s when he sees them, Theia souls, Ramses had mentioned the prototypes off-hand and Juno had mentioned them to Rita, she hadn’t found much. Oh and also the explosions, Juno hisses, his head throbbing, and makes his way through the sewers. They shift and bend around him shielding him from the worst of the explosions and Juno focuses, protects the rabbits he can find.

Then one of the bots corners him as he’s making sure a little rabbit gets away. He holds his ground prepared to make the bot drag him kicking and screaming to Ramses when it starts to sound familiar.

And then well Juno’s always been a coward but right now he okay with that, so he speaks to Rita, and he doesn’t hold back because she’s not going to leave him, she’s not going to turn on him, he knows that, he’s always known that.

They reunite and Juno wraps his arms around her, breathes in the scent of her perfume and exhales for the first time in the past three days and he just wants to go home but he can’t do that now, not anymore.

Ramses is pale, wizened in his office and his smile when he sees Juno is real, he can tell that much.

“What do you think Juno?” Ramses asks and he looks almost hopeful, his eyes are bright almost feverish and Juno is suddenly struck with the knowledge that Ramses honestly wants to help Juno, thinks he’s doing it too, wants Juno to fight alongside him.

Juno shakes his head, “I think you’ve made a mistake with the Theia souls.”

He can feel them, feel his citizens, fuzzy, choked, wrapped in layers of wispy spider silk binding them and it’s so wrong and there’s so much good and for a moment you have to question whether its better this way. But all this good, at the cost of free will? That’s not how it works.

“Now the Theia’s are just there to enforce the transition they are harm-,”

“I’m not talking about the bots,” Juno interrupts, “I’m talking about the chips you’re using to control the people here.”

Ramses pauses for a moment, leans back and Juno can tell he’s stumped him, that he couldn’t predict this outcome. Slowly, Ramses responds, “It’s for the good of the city.”

“Funny you never thought to ask me or my citizens,” Juno replies because this doesn’t feel good. The vision in one of his eyes is blurry and his head feels like it’s wrapped in cotton and his mouth is tacky with dehydration.

“It’s better this way.”

“It’s not.”

“What would you have me do Juno?” Ramses asks splaying his hands in front of him on the desk, the winds of change have gone sour, acrid, and Juno isn’t sure what he wants anymore but it’s not this, not a statue of Andromeda where his home used to be, not Mick with Theia implants, not his city like this.

Juno sighs and shakes his head, “Stop the Theia soul, what you’ve done already, that’s more than enough. But the Theia, it’s not right.”

“This works Juno, all the bad choices are gone, it will create a better society it’s a fact-,”

“You can count on Jack,” Juno replies and the words sink through him.

Ramses pauses, one long exhale before he says, “You remember.”

Juno nods before saying quietly, “I won’t pretend this isn’t personal anymore.”

“No, I think we’re beyond that point,” Ramses replies staring distantly out the window at what was once Old Town, it itches, like a scab. He turns back to face Juno, “Well, what are you going to do now Juno?”

He looks into Ramsey’s eyes and knows, “I’m going to stop the Theia and when that’s done, I’ll come back here and we’ll have a chat.”

“I look forward to it Juno.”

Turns out his body will reject the Theia soul after about thirty minutes which is more than enough time for Rita to activate the virus and destroy the tower. As the chips fall off his citizens slowly clearing away the cottony feeling, Juno inhales and knows that it’s over, he’s done all he can.

There’s just one more thing to do.

He goes back to that office and when he opens the door, Ramses is dead.

He exhales long and slow all the words that had built up on his way over fading away as quickly as they had come. He glances over the paper on his desk and finds one addressed to him, he shakes his head at the scratched out Hyperion before his own name, then he reads the letter.

It’s short, unfinished, and it doesn’t have any answers.

Juno tucks it into the safe with his Theia soul in the aftermath of everything and then his fingers brush against the comms the big guy gave him and he realises he knows what he wants to do.

The Carte Blanche lands and Juno catches a glimpse of Buddy and Vespa, hands linked together, and there, leaning against the Ruby Seven, Peter Nureyev. Their eyes connect, he can smell fresh bread, hear fountains tinkling, Peter smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! I hope you all enjoyed this fic I kind of did a speed run on canon but it was fun to write. Comments are always super appreciated, thank you!


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